Transnational Behaviour among Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Participants in Malaysia: An Exploratory Study
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Abstract
The decision to stay overseas among general migrants are largely driven by economic factors. However, the second home migrants were reported to have different drives to reside overseas and inevitably practicing different transnational behaviours. Understanding such behaviours enable policymakers and destination marketers to best plan second home tourism products and services. To date, the study on transnational behaviours still receives little attention. Thus, this article serves to identify the types of transnational behaviours among Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) participants in Malaysia and its differences with the general migrants. The researchers in-depth interviewed 38 MM2H participants through a snowballing sampling method and analysed the data using the qualitative NVivo software. Other than the common types of transnational behaviour shared by both the second home migrants and the general migrants (i.e., financial transactions, social contact, information transfer, and lifestyle and cultural exchanges), the study discovers a new behavioural type which is “travel to maintain or enhance social contact”. “Product exchange”, a behavioural type which commonly featured among general migrants as a transnational behaviour, is absent among the MM2H participants. There are two key knowledge contributions to this study. Firstly, the new transnational behavioural type of “travel to maintain/enhance social contact” may be a useful indicator to distinguish retirement migrants from general migrants. Secondly, the retirement migrants did not perform transnational commerce (e.g., product transfer) as the general migrants did. The authority who promotes second home destination needs to provide conducive and efficient facilities for the second home migrants to perform their transnational behaviour smoothly. User-friendly policies are required to enhance transnational activities among them, and simultaneously improve the programme to lure the participation of new second home migrants to the country. Researchers have limited access to the second home migrants in Malaysia for privacy reasons. The interview was only conducted in English, thus further limiting the pool of respondents to participate in the study. The qualitative study carried out renders the results unable to be generalised as representing the entire MM2H population, though it provides a decent representation of the phenomenon.
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